GIRARD – The Iola Fillies and senior guard Sydney Wade certainly felt the pressure as they traveled to Girard and faced off with the third-ranked team in the state. And that was just how Girard coach Brad Herlocker had planned with Girard winning 49-19.
“I’d like to try and find two teams in the state better than they are,” Iola coach Becky Carlson said. “They are pretty good.”
The Trojans implement a Diamond-and-One defense designed to limit the production of Wade and thus throw the entire Fillies’ offense out of whack.
The plan worked.
“They pretty much took Sydney out of it,” Carlson said. “That made a big difference, but it has to make us better.”
With one of the Trojans’ top defenders face-guarding Wade for much of the game and not even looking at the ball ovr the other four Fillies on the court, Girard made Wade work for everything she got. If the Trojans were going to lose, Herlocker wasn’t going to let Wade be the one to do it.
“We tried to put Sydney in the corner and we got some looks, but ththey are so dag-gum tall that even if you get the ball in the lane,” Carlson said. “We had a hard time finishing our shots.”
The Girard coach has the option of implementing that kind of defense because of who he has protecting the rim.
Girard’s 6-3 center Ashley Ray has already committed to continue her basketball career next season at Kansas State University and her steer size proved to be too much for the Fillies to overcome with their leader being limited.
“It is really hard to simulate and girl that big in practice,” Carlson said. “I thought we did a great job on defense, but on offense we just struggled.
“They are quick and long and we just had a hard time finding shots.”
Wade was held to seven points, but still led the Fillies in scoring with no one else able to solve the mystery of how to get to the basket and score over Ray.
The other Fillies to score were Toni Macha and Chloe Gardner, who each had four points and Katie Bauer and Riley Murry, who each had two points.
The Fillies will try to put the lose behind them as quickly as possible with three games looming next week in the Central Heights Tournament beginning on Monday.
The tournament gives the Fillies the chance to quickly get the taste of the lop-sided loss out of their mouths, but it also represents a pressure-packed week early in the year, as they want to avoid falling too far behind the 8-ball this early in the year.
